Express…It’s All in the Delivery

A new inmate hears a guy shout “42!” and the whole cell block roars with laughter. His cellmate explains, “We’ve been here so long we numbered every joke to save time.” Wanting to fit in, the new guy yells “74!”—dead silence. “What happened?” he asks. “Is 74 bad?” His cellmate sighs, “Nah, 74 is hilarious. You just told it wrong.”

What Express Actually Is

So, we’ve Captured raw information, Organized it for recall and retrieval later, and Distilled it so we could make sense of it ourselves. But the hardest part of all the CODEA² process, in my opinion, is the Express step, or getting that information out of your head and into your audience’s so they can use it. This goes beyond presentations too, including decision delivery, 1:1s, and (obviously) basic conversation with colleagues. I’ve seen brilliant people, researchers, military leaders, clinicians –you name it– fail in this crucial step. So, never forget this basic tenet: if your audience misses your point, it’s ultimately your fault.

Match the Purpose to the Moment

We’ve all been there where we were told to analyze a situation then present your findings to a group. In this case, you may have a clear understanding of how to approach the preceding steps of CODEA². If it’s a one-off, then you might stay focused on just enough information gathering and synthesis to crank out a slide deck. Generally, I’d recommend a broader view in case you want to reuse your information for other situations, but sometimes time is a challenge, or the task is right in front of you. Regardless, you must match the purpose of your presentation to optimize the chance your audience will get what they need from you.

I’ve put together a graphic that covers the majority of purposes where you might put information in front of an audience. Every time you open your mouth or click “present,” you’re doing one of eight things. You’re informing (here’s what’s true), persuading (here’s what you should believe), asking for a decision (here’s what I need from you), and instructing (here’s how to do this). Or you may be reporting status (here’s where things stand), delivering a pre-decision analysis (here’s what I found and what it means), inspiring (here’s why this matters), or documenting for the record (here’s what happened, for later). Pick wrong and everything downstream suffers — a status update that tries to inspire wastes the room’s patience, and a decision ask that only informs leaves your audience nodding politely with no idea what you actually want from them.

There are four primary things to check before you get in front of others. You need to get the purpose right, then apply the correct filter or your message may not be received as intended.

I think the most key of the four is considering your audience. If you were speaking at a conference attended by people who are part of your industry you might be okay with some jargon tossed in, or common acronyms. This fizzles fast with a board of volunteers as does trying to demonstrate mastery of a subject when it’s a simple status update. Consider wisely how much depth you’ll go at a minimum: if they need to know what the time is don’t tell them how to build a clock.

The Package Is Often as Important as the Content

What form you put out your information is key, obviously. If you need a decision, then have materials to assist the audience in making it. A slide deck on screen is all very well, but you might win the day with one page or two-sided document that is in front of them as you go through your slides. Don’t use an approach that is more convenient for you but burdensome on the audience, or that will be poorly received or easily misunderstood.

The content can be flawless and still fail. The package is the delivery vehicle — if it breaks down, the content never arrives.

A quick example to illustrate this point. As a military instructor in San Antonio, I once gave a student a failing grade on a major project. The assignment was to analyze a military battle of their choosing, writing a graduate-level research paper with their findings linking back to class terminal learning objectives. The paper was one deliverable, and a presentation to the rest of their small group was another. This particular student’s paper was one of the best I’d seen so I was excited for their presentation. Frankly, the presentation was an epic fail. The student decided to embed videos into their presentation, used transition automations for bullets, and more. His plan initially worked passably well but fate was not so kind, and his videos started failing to load. Unfortunately, he had no backup plan, not even crib notes on 3×5 cards. No matter how good the content in the message, if it doesn’t get delivered how it should it won’t matter.

GARB: A Discipline for Recurring Reports

If you’re delivering the same report on a cycle — weekly status, monthly ops review, quarterly readiness check — inconsistency is its own failure mode. Your audience shouldn’t have to relearn how to read your report every time you hand it to them. It helps fireproof decision making when you are fatigued, or you just want to get to the bottom line. That’s what what a Green, Amber, Red, Black, or GARB report is: a simple four-color status system that essentially answers one question — could I hand this off, as-is, today? Note: this is a universal tool applicable in many scenarios if you give it some thought.

The rule that makes it work: overall status equals your single lowest category — never an average. Five green categories don’t offset one black one, because your audience can tolerate imperfect documentation or a staffing gap. What they can’t tolerate is one unmanaged risk sitting quietly underneath everything else that looks fine.

One more layer worth adding once the basic system is running: a trend arrow next to each status — ⬆️ improving, ➡ stable, ⬇ slipping. Status alone tells your audience where things stand. Status plus trend tells them where things are headed, and a ⬇ Amber often deserves more attention in the room than an ⬆️ Red — one is quietly getting worse while the other is actively being fixed.

Express Isn’t Just Presentations

Everything above scales down as easily as it scales up. A 1:1 with a direct report is Express. Delivering a hard decision to a peer is Express. The two-minute drive-by where you tell your boss where a project stands is Express. The same discipline applies at every size: know your purpose before you open your mouth, filter for the audience in front of you, and package it so they can actually use what you gave them. The stakes just get smaller, not the principle.

Rapid-Fire: Tactics for Presentations

Having seen or read hundreds (probably thousands) of presentations and information papers, plus gave my own, I’ve learned a few things. For presentations:

• Never read your bullets aloud — it insults the room and they’ll tune out reading ahead of you
• Tell people upfront what you want the presentation to do for them — especially if you want a decision
• Have a backup plan for tech failures; mention the glitch once, then move to Plan B
• Go easy on transitions and animation — one for effect, max
• Confirm that the font is readable for the size of venue you’ll be presenting in
• Decide your own rule on when to take questions; mid-session works best if you don’t want people forgetting theirs. Most people prefer to ask them as you present so have a good reason why you wait until the end (don’t make it because you find questions irritating!)
• Don’t say “I’ll cover that later” more than once or twice
• Don’t overstay your allotted time — it’s rude and can undo the outcome you wanted
• Planning factor: 60 seconds per slide, max, before questions
• Leave room at the end for the deeper discussion that actually confirms you communicated what was needed. A poorly delivered presentation can be redeemed by a good-to-great Q&A at the end of it

Where This Leaves You

Capture, Organize, and Distill all happen before anyone but you ever sees the work. Express is the moment it becomes real to someone else — and it’s the step some people skip preparing for, because they assume good content speaks for itself. It doesn’t. It needs a purpose, a filter, and a package, or it never actually lands.

Once it does land, the job still isn’t done. What did you learn about how it landed? What would you change next time? That’s the next step in CODEA² — After Action Review — and it’s where we go next.

What’s the worst “epic fail” delivery you’ve witnessed — or been the cause of? I want to hear it.